20 



favoured the former system : for Aristotle only rekfca 

 the other opinion as introductory to the establishment 

 of his own ; and Hippocrates contents himself \\ith in. 

 sinuating the notion^ that there may be aniiiialcula id 

 the male seed, without taking it upon him to establish 

 it as a truth. Besides, he might have admitted of sper- 

 matic vermicuh in the sease that some moderns do, in 

 oroVr to reconcile the two systems, regarding the eggs 

 as niduses proper for the reception of the spermatic 

 vermiculi, and containing matter necessary for contri- 

 buting to their growth. In this case the spermatic 

 w?orm will be the real feet us, the substance of the egg 

 its nourishment, and the membranes of it its wrappers* 



14. Plato hath still more clearly spoken of those 

 small animals which become men ; for after having 

 compared the womb to a fertile field, in which the 

 scattered seed produces fruit; he says, " that the 

 animalcula, which there receive their growth, are at 

 first so extremely small as nut to be perceptible to the 

 eye, but coming gradually to unfold themselves and 

 expand, by means of the food prepared for them in 

 the womb, they afterwards spring i 01 thin to day in nil 

 the perfection ot birth." Nor can it tc denied that 

 Seneca had a very distinct idea of this system of human 

 generaiion by aninialcula, when we find him teaching, 

 u that the human form before birth was comprised m 

 the seed, where all the members of the body were con- 

 centered and suroudfd up m a little indiscernible place." 

 \Vhich Terrulliau hath expressed in few words, when 

 he says, " the seed hath hie in it from the very first.' 1 



15. The discovery respecting the multiplicity of 

 animation of which the polypus is capable, is what no- 

 bi, iy makes a >y diiliciiky of regarding as due to the 

 moderns, though Aristotle and St. Augustine speak of 

 it as elearly as any of the moderns, as a thing which 

 they knew from their own experience. The latter re. 

 lates in his book concerning the dimension of the soul) 

 that one of his friends performed the experiment be- 



